Renewed rebel attacks cause thousands to flee south-eastern Guinea: UNHCR
3 October -- Nearly 4,000 people fled a refugee camp in south-eastern Guinea following attacks by rebels over the weekend, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced today.
"The camp was reportedly burned by the attackers early on Saturday morning and a UNHCR warehouse was reportedly looted," a spokesman for the agency, Kris Janowski, told reporters in Geneva. He said that following the attack, which took place in the Farmoriah camp in the Forecariah Prefecture, Guinean troops were deployed along the nearby border with Sierra Leone. "According to UNHCR staff in Forecariah, the army has asked the local population and refugees to vacate the area," he said.
UNHCR estimates that there were some 32,000 refugees in Forecariah, mostly from Sierra Leone, but many have left in the past few days. Some refugees from Farmoriah have spontaneously gone back to Sierra Leone. The UNHCR Freetown office reported several thousand returns around the Sierra Leonean towns of Lungi and Port Loko. Closer to the Guinean border, a group of some 5,000 returnees is reported to be trapped in Sierra Leone's Kambia district, which is inaccessible because of the presence of rebels from the Revolutionary United Front.
Meanwhile, UNHCR reported that the situation in Gueckedou Prefecture in south-western Guinea "seems to have calmed." Last month, the agency had evacuated its staff from the area after the head of its office in Macenta, Mensah Kpognon, was killed by gunmen. Today, spokesman Janowski said the agency "will only return when the safety of its personnel is ensured and the border situation has stabilized."
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